The Role of Folk Consciousness in the Modern State: Its Efficacy, Use and Abuse

A video recording of a presentation by Dr Jim Brown (Standford University) on 'The role of Folk Consciousness in the Modern State: Its Efficacy, Use and Abuse' at the National Storytelling Conference in Bhutan 2009. The presentation is followed by Ap Dregang narrating 'Tshongon Dawa Zango and Damtsi Drem'.World Oral Literature Project: an urgent global initiative to document and make accessible endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record

Exploring speech in Russian fairy tales

Both because of their prevalence in contemporary culture and because of their ability to affect the acculturation of children, fairy tales are commonly examined from a feminist perspective. Many scholars have begun to ask if the distribution of agency in tales reflects patriarchal values, for example, are princesses nothing more than passive damsels in distress? One way to discuss these types of power relationships is to examine speech. The ability to speak can be viewed as a type of agency that shapes a character’s outcome within a narrative; it is through speech that characters bless, curse, and interact with one another. This paper seeks to explore the connections among agency, gender, moral alignment, and speech in Russian fairy tales from the Alexander Afanas′ev collection. As part of this research, the frequency of male and female vocalizations has been measured, as well as different types of silence. This research also examines the patterns of speech that appear in different tale typologies that revolve around a central female character

Molding Messages: Analyzing the Reworking of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in \u3ci\u3eGrimm’s Fairy Tale Classics\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eDollhouse\u3c/i\u3e

The story of “Sleeping Beauty” (ATU 410) is one of the most consistently captivating fairy tales. It tells of a cursed princess dreaming in a tower, waiting patiently for her prince to rescue her. Those who recreate the tale for contemporary audiences spin the story anew, reconstructing again and again what it means both to sleep and to awaken. This chapter analyzes two modern television versions of the tale, one for children and one for adults, comparing their incorporation of feminist messages and parallel ideas about shaping narratives and shaping lives. The children’s cartoon Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (also called Grimm Masterpiece Theatre) and the adult program Dollhouse each remold the story to advance very specific rereadings of the tale

Narrative Strategies in Benedikte Naubert's Neue Volksmarchen der Deutschen

No abstract available

"We Are What We Are Supposed to Be": The Brothers Grimm as Fictional Representations

This article examines how the Brothers Grimm are fictionalized in German and Anglo-American media. While some representations revere and romanticize the iconic brothers for preserving the fairy-tale tradition, other depictions challenge the conventional understanding of their work and cultural contribution. In these demythologizing depictions, the Grimms appear ambiguous and even demonic. In recent representations, however, the Grimms—and their heirs—have been recast in positive roles that are both problematic and revealing. The persistent resurrection of the Grimms and the diverse roles they have been asked to play offer insight into the search for cultural myths, meaning, and identity

Sleeping Beauty and Her Many Relatives

The Grimm Brothers’ Little Briar-Rose is a beloved fairytale, which is more commonly known as Sleeping Beauty. What began as a Volksmärchen, is now a world famous and beloved Kunstmärchen. The Brothers collected and adapted the tale, incorporating their own literary style, helping to develop a literary Germanic cultural history. In this thesis I analyze how the tale evolves from the original oral tale to the literary story, and how various perspectives of culture and authors, with particular audiences in mind, adapt their versions. Historical background of the Grimms and their influences, an analysis of how the story was revised by the Grimms in the 1812 and 1857 editions, how American children’s versions compare to the Grimms’ version and how Jane Yolen’s version of Sleeping Beauty meets the structural and cultural expectations of the Grimms’ tale are examined

When Beauty Goes to Sleep: an analysis of the symbolism behind the sleeping beauty tale

Approaching the world of the fairy tale as an adult, one soon realizes that things are not what they once seemed during story time in bed. Something that once appeared so innocent and simple can become rather complex when digging into its origin. A kiss, for example, can mean something else entirely. I can clearly remember my sister, who is ten years older than I am, telling me that the fairy tales I was told had a mysterious hidden meaning I could not understand. I was probably 9 or 10 when she told me that the story of Sleeping Beauty, which I used to love so much in Disney’s rendering, was nothing more than the story of an adolescent girl, with all the necessary steps needed to become a woman, the bleeding of menstruation and the sexual awakening - even though she did not really put it in these terms. This shocking news troubled me for a while, so much so that I haven’t watched that movie since. But in reality it was not fear that my sister had implanted in me: it was curiosity, the feeling that I was missing something terribly important behind the words and images. But it was not until last year during my semester abroad in Germany, where I had the chance to take a very interesting English literature seminar, that I fully understood what I had been looking for all these years. Thanks to what I learned from the work of Bruno Bettelheim, Jack Zipes, Vladimir Propp, and many other authors that wrote extensively about the subject, I feel I finally have the right tools to really get to know this fairy tale. But what I also know now is that the message behind fairy tales is not to be searched for behind only one version: on the contrary, since they come from oral traditions and their form was slowly shaped by centuries of recountals and retellings, the more one digs, the more complete the understanding of the tale will be. I will therefore look for Sleeping Beauty’s hidden meaning by looking for the reason why it did stick so consistently throughout time. To achieve this goal, I have organized my analysis in three chapters: in the first chapter, I will analyze the first known literary version of the tale, the French Perceforest, and then compare it with the following Italian version, Basile’s Sun, Moon, and Talia; in the second chapter, I will focus on the most famous and by now classical literary versions of Sleeping Beauty, La Belle Au Bois Dormant, written by the Frenchman, Perrault, and the German Dornröschen, recorded by the Brothers Grimm’s; finally, in the last chapter, I will analyze Almodovar’s film Talk to Her as a modern rewriting of this tale, which after a closer look, appears closely related to the earliest version of the story, Perceforest